Q12 Exercise: An Easy Discussion-Starter to Build Trust and Understanding

June 14, 2018

The data wizards at Gallup have identified 12 questions that predict employee engagement.

Organizations whose employees score higher in these 12 questions get better results across the board on all fundamental business metrics that you care about, including profitability, productivity, turnover, safety and more.

How can you use these 12 questions? In our leadership program we ask managers to rank them in order of importance based on their own priorities. Then, they identify 3 out of the 12 that they want their team to rank highest. When they compare their responses with other managers at their table, they often find some consistency but also significant differences with their peers. That’s often their first ‘aha’ moment–Not everyone has the same priorities.

Then, as part of their homework, they ask each of their employees to rank the 12 questions based on what is important to them. Then the manager and his team share and discuss their rankings. When managers report back on this exercise at the next class, we hear about the lively discussions that take place with their teams. Two questions that seem to spur the most discussion and debate are ‘I have a best friend at work’ and ‘I’ve had recognition in the last 7 days’.

What’s the net outcome from this exercise? When the manager shares her own rankings, she is being vulnerable and more approachable. This provides the employees with the opportunity to open up and be vulnerable too.

Managers find out what’s important to each of their employees and, if they follow up on those items, trust goes way up. This is because the employees see that their manager is paying attention – they feel “heard”. You see the same effect between employees. Understanding and trust grow as employees share their lists and the explanations behind their priorities.

This exercise is productive and fun. Managers and employees get into energetic, insightful and fun discussions about a very important topic.

This is just one of the many activities that managers use in our highly interactive program to engage their employees, as they learn how to build high performance teams.